Bobby and Andrea 9-9-75

I wrote yesterday in Weeding out to create room for what I want that I noticed my laundry room and pantry area needed decluttering, so I spent the morning cleaning and organizing.  I ran across about 24″ of cookbooks, some of them I’ve never opened, some 30 and 40 years old.  I see I have eleven volumes I don’t need of the Better Homes and Gardens series Great Cooking Made Easy.  There are half a dozen cookbooks I’ll keep, as well as my own collection of recipes, but I’ll give the rest away. 

I see I’d taped 3 x 5 hand written recipe cards to grid paper.  It’s funny seeing my handwriting at age 18.  I wasn’t really into cooking, so I’d make a card for every recipe that I or my mate liked best.   I also kept a card for my family’s favorite dishes so I could remember those, too.

I smiled yesterday when I came across the cards I kept for my younger brother Bobby.  He used to bring me a week’s worth of groceries to prepare meals for him to take back to his place. I’d spend a Saturday roasting him a pork loin, maybe a ham, a chicken, making him a meatloaf and cornbread, several baked potatoes, sometimes I’d fry him a dozen chicken drumsticks, stuffed shells and lasagna.  I’d send it home with him packed in Tupperware to freeze for the next couple of weeks.  Microwaves were newly on the scene, so he had no need to cook. It was fun doing that for him when he didn’t have a girlfriend or wife at home to cook for him.  He passed in 1976.  I’ll see him next time around.